Bright (bright) bright (bright) sunshiny day

Wow. The sun has really been in my face all day today. And unlike the song, there were plenty of times when I couldn’t “see clearly” for the intense glare.

It wasn’t so bad at 7 a.m. when the sunlight made the morning dew sparkle. At that point it was still all light and no heat but by noon the sun was bright and hot — a hot and bothersome ball in the sky.

In brightest day…

Magic mirror on the wall, who is the brightest one of all?

By 2 p.m. it looked and felt like I was binning under the glare of a thousand Klieg lights. It wasn’t just the starkness of the shadows; the over abundance of light was overwhelming and amazing. It seemed to coalesce and pool on objects. And by sheer luminescent force it imparted mirror-like qualities to surfaces as dull as stucco.

This three-storey walk up on Fir Street looks its age.

The intense sunshine was also quite merciless. It went beyond kindly illumination to cruelly exposing flaws.

Every imperfection was brought to light: walls were shown to be uneven, sidewalks and streets were pocked and mottled and fresh-cleaned glass was shown to be streaky. People fared no better.

While July is Vancouver B.C.’s sunniest month of the year and more of the sun’s rays do fall on Vancouver during the summer months, none of this actually supports my personal feeling that sunshine is much more intense in the summer than in the winter.

More sunshine doesn’t apparently equal brighter sunshine.

All the same, I thought the sun was as bright as it’s been all year. And I thought it was glaringly obvious. Click the images to enlarge them.